


Trouble Over Water

by greywardenblue



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Fictober 2019, Foster Parents, Found Family, Gay Male Character, Gen, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23173333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywardenblue/pseuds/greywardenblue
Summary: The story of how two queer special agents dealing with superpowered individuals adopt an unruly child.
Relationships: just a regular gay couple and their adopted daughter
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Trouble Over Water

She’d had a lot of “talking-tos” from serious adults, like police officers, social workers, and special agents. The latter were usually focused on secrecy and “not giving the conspiracy theorists more fodder, please, AJ, work with me here”.

That one was Agent Flaherty. AJ thought those were rich words from a guy whose husband walked around with a large, fancy parrot like that was a normal thing to do. She made sure to voice that opinion, and she could see he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“She’s got us there,” he’d told Agent Williams.

Williams was a black man who always dressed very proper, in black pants and white shirt, which just made the parrot even weirder. It was a beautiful parrot, one of those red-green-blue ones, like the pirates had in the picture books. 

Flaherty looked more like a pirate than Williams did. White guy, unruly hair, never without stubble, and he even had a small scar on his cheek to fit the bill.

The two of them were as kind as anyone could be to an unwanted child, she supposed.

As I said, she’d had a lot of talking-tos before, although they were more like talking- _ats_ as far as she was concerned. She rode in the backseat of government cars, too. But usually they were taking her back to the social workers, not _away_.

“Are you taking me to jail?” she asked after a few minutes. Flaherty looked in the mirror.

“Oh, yes. A very fancy, hippy jail. You’ll love it.”

“ _James_ ,” Williams scolded him. “We’re not taking you to jail, sweetheart. Just wait and see, okay? You’ll be fine, I promise.”

The police officers called her sweetheart a lot, when they were being condescending jerks. Police officers pissed her off more, because they thought she was just a kid acting out. At least these two _knew things_. Sweetheart felt different coming from Agent Williams. But it still felt suspicious.

“We’re on a bridge,” she said.

Flaherty nodded. “Yes, we are. You don’t come to this part of the city a lot, do you? That is the river–”

She wasn’t listening. She mentally counted to three, and then she _lunged_.

For two seconds, there was silence in the car.

“Did she just jump out of the car?” Flaherty asked very quietly.

“Pull over,” Williams said, as pale as he’d ever been.

–

_She was a strong swimmer, but she wasn’t prepared for how strong the river was in the middle. That was fine. She was surprised at first, but she’d be stronger._

_She crawled out and climbed over the fence to the swimming pools. Luckily there was a girl about her size coming out of the changing rooms, and she only had to linger around them a bit until she got a look at the locker number. She sneaked into the changing room and reached into the locker through the door until she found the girl’s clothes._

_“Sorry,” she said as she put her own red shorts and galaxy-patterned shirt in the locker. “Hope you’ll like my clothes. You’d better, that’s one of my favorite shirts.”  
_

_She actually hesitated for a moment over the damn shirt. But she didn’t have anywhere to put it, and besides, it would have been mean to leave the other girl without anything to wear. She turned and walked away, breaking into the run once she was on the outside of the fence._

–

It took them a while to find the trail, mostly because there was barely one. A regular police officer would have lost the girl without even finding out her path lead through the swimming pools. Even James had trouble figuring out where she headed next.

“At least she has invisibility,” he murmured. That was a good thing in this case: that way they didn’t have to explain to the media why a twelve-year-old girl - according to their best guess - threw herself out of a moving car on a bridge, jumped into the river, and swam to shore on her own.

“I have two questions left,” Oli said, voice dangerously calm. Even Biscuit resting on his arm looked nervous. “One, why wasn’t the invisibility in her file? And two, how did invisibility allow her to jump out of a moving car _without opening the door_?”

James looked like he’d just swallowed a dozen lemons. “Maybe we should have told her where we were taking her,” he said quietly.

“Oh, now?” Oli asked, his voice only rising a tiny bit in volume. “ _Now_ you listen to me? I told you this whole surprise was a bad idea. She didn’t grow up like you, James! She doesn’t think of surprises as a good thing!”

“Yes, I see that now,” James said, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “Look, you can shout at me after we found her, okay? She probably can’t hold the invisibility for more than half an hour. Come on, let’s ask around.” He stepped towards the ticket booth. “Excuse me, have you seen this girl? She was wearing red shorts and a galaxy-patterned shirt…”

–

They were sitting in the car, Oli’s eyes clear milky white when he said, “I’ve got her.” He gave the street name and James turned the car. There was a soft thump a few minutes later as Biscuit landed on top, holding on tightly, and Oli’s eyes returned to their regular brown.

She was dangling her feet from the top of a balcony, and James let out a breath. That was fine. That was familiar. Superhuman agility and jumps were her registered powers, at least. This was fine.

“You’re not an assassin, AJ,” he said. “Get down from there.”

“I’m not an assassin,” she said. “I’m the girl from Submerged. You’re standing in murky water. Also, I’m not going to jail. If you try to get me off here, I’ll just climb up to the roof and run away.”

“We weren’t taking you to jail,” Oli said. “We were taking you to show us our house.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

Oli shook his head. “Because we were going to foster you. Only this dumbass-” He gestured towards James. “Thought it would be a good idea to surprise you with it.”

“It’s not my fault I’m high wisdom, low intelligence,” James said.

Oli sighed. “The other way around, dear.”

“How am I supposed to know? I’ve never actually played D&D.”

“Wisdom and intelligence as concepts weren’t invented by D&D, James.”

James was about to respond, then he froze. The girl was too quiet. He turned back around, fully expecting to see no sign of her, but no. She was still sitting on the balcony, staring at them with wide eyes.

“Well… Are you going to come down now?” James asked.

She burst into tears.

“Oh. Oh no.” They looked at each other, helpless. “Wait, I’ll just… I’ll climb up.”

“You can’t climb up,” Oli was saying. “I’ll find you something to stand on, hang on…”

AJ was loudly bawling her eyes out on the balcony railing. James tried to summon his hundreds of hours playing Assassin’s Creed. His brain knew exactly how he could climb up if he was playing Ezio, but that didn’t mean it would work in real life.

Well. You only live once.

–

“I told you to wait until I found something to stand on,” Oli said later after the nurse stepped out of the room.

“It’s just a broken arm,” James protested. “It’s barely a scratch.”

“Could have been your head,” AJ said from the corner. That was the first time she spoke since they put her in the car and hurried to the hospital.

James smiled at her. “Guess I’m not an assassin either.”

She didn’t smile back. Her eyes were still red and puffy from the crying, which only got louder when James fell down and broke his arm.

Oli sighed. The doctors didn’t let him bring Biscuit into the building, so poor thing was outside on the windowsill, which always made him nervous. “Well, hopefully they release you soon so we can get moving. We won’t have time to give AJ the whole tour if we’re here any longer.”

AJ blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Of the house? I told you we were taking you there.”

“But…” she paused, looking between the two of them. “But I thought… You said you were going to fo-foster me. Didn’t you change your mind?”

The two men looked at each other and opened their mouths the same time.

“Oh, no, honey, of course not,” James said, interrupting whatever Oli was going to say. “We’ve known you for years. We knew what we were signing up for.”

“Evidently not,” Oli murmured.

“Okay, yes, I was an idiot, and I thought a surprise would be a good idea. That’s on me, you can stop bringing it up.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Oli fixed her with a serious look. “Invisibility? Phasing through solid objects? That is multiple powers we didn’t know about. Your file is completely wrong. Your classification is wrong–”

“You’re not gonna tell them, are you?” she said, suddenly scared. “I’m fine with my _classification_. I don’t want to go to the special school.”

“Wait, what?” James said. “ _Everyone_ wants to go to training school! Don’t you want to meet all the other kids who are like you?”

AJ rolled her eyes. “I’ve read enough books. _And_ I’ve played Beyond: Two Souls. I’m not going to the special training school where the government or whoever can send me on sketchy missions and lie to me about what I’m doing.”

Oli shrugged. “She’s got you there.” He massaged his temples. His headache was suddenly back in full force. “We’ll talk about this at home, alright? Possibly not today. Sometime over the weekend.”

“Will there be ice cream?” AJ asked tentatively.

“What are you saying? I just broke my arm,” James said. “ _Of course_ there will be ice cream.”

She smiled a shaky smile. Oli sat down on James’s bed and patted the place next to him, and she took it after some hesitation. There was a moment of silence, then she lunged forward again, her arms around Oli’s waist. The two men looked at each other over her head and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Oli and James within two weeks of meeting each other 
> 
> Oli “I’m sorry if this is an invasive question, but are you taking anything for your ADHD?" 
> 
> James "my what" 
> 
> Oli ”…………………. well, that explains a lot"


End file.
